Chapter 6

Understanding Students with Communication Disorders

• Speech Disorder- difficulty producing sounds & the disorders of voice quality. As well as fluency (aka stuttering)

• Language Disorder- difficulty receiving, understanding or formulatingideas and information

Speech vs. Language Disorders

Receptive Language Disorder

Difficulty receiving or understanding information

Expressive Language Disorder

Difficulty formulating ideas and information

These disorders can occur alone, in combination or in conjunction with other disorders

• Cleft Palate or Lip- a condition in which a person has a split in the upper part of the oral cavity or upper lip.

“Differences DO NOT always mean disorder”

Speech & Language Disorders

Students from different cultures have speech or language differences.• Accents• Dialects

• Speech- oral expression of language.

• Language- structured, rule-governed symbolic system for communication.

• Phonemes- the sound of a single letter.

• Morphology- the sound of an entire word when phonemes are put together.

• Syntax- the arrangement of morphemes into a sentence. (appropriately)

• Semantics- the meaning of what is expressed.

• Pragmatics- the use of communication in contexts.

A child’s language development is associated with social interactions

-Lev Vygotsky

Speech Development

• Articulation- a speaker’s production of individual or sequenced sounds

• Substitutions- a speaker’s substitution of sounds in phonemes

• Omissions- a speaker leaves out a phoneme from a word

• Additions- a speaker places a vowel sound between two consonants

While these are common in preschoolers and school age children, in most cases these speech difficulties will disappear with maturation. It is when these difficulties

do not disappear with maturation that we get concerned.

• Apraxia- affects the way a student plans to produce speech

Types of Speech Disorders

Organic Disorders

• Caused by an identifiable problem in the neuromuscular mechanism on the person

• Can originate in the nervous system, muscular system or the chromosomes.

• Can include hereditary malformations, prenatal injuries, tumors, trauma, etc.

Functional Disorders

-no identifiable organic or neurological cause

Determining the Causes

Congenital Disorder

Disorder that occurs before birth

Acquired Disorder

Disorder that occurs after birth

Evaluating These StudentsObservation

Screening

Prereferral

Referral

Nondiscriminatory evaluation & procedures

Determination

From teacher or medical personnel of child not achieving developmental milestones

Assessments performed in areas where child is having difficulty

School based team will make suggestions

After attempts of interventions, child is referred to a multidisciplinary team

Records of health, curriculum-based assessment & direct observations

If the team finds a disorder, the IEP team develops appropriate options

• A piece of commercial or hand-made equipment that assists an individual to perform communication functions.

• Augmentative and alternative communication system (ACC) can assist students with gestures, speaking or writing.

• Teams of parents, teachers & aids should collaboratively make decisions for implementing an ACC.

• These AAC’s can be individualized to meet the specific vocabulary needs of each student.

• Plans set in place by the student's educational team will evaluate and regulate the usage of the ACC.

Assistive Technology (AT)

Facilitating Language Development

In Early Childhood:

• A child’s educational center should promote social interaction during all parts of the day in order.

In Elementary and Middle Schools

• Help bridge the gap between learning reading and writing to reading and writing to learn.

• Use of graphic organizers

Secondary and Transitional Schools

• Working towards the child’s ability to communicate without an ACC

Instructional Strategies

Because speech is highly based on social interactions, it is important that students with a speech disorder spend 80-100% of their day in a general

education classroom.

Inclusion

Assessing Progress

• Curriculum-based Assessments- Best form of assessment because it measure’s a students progress in the general

curriculum. - Work towards lowering the discrepancy between the student's current

communication skill level and the curriculum standard.

Making Accommodations for Assessments

• What is being assessed?

• Where does the child need help communicating? -Word processor, extra time, etc.

-Use formats of tests that best compliment a student’s most common means of expression.

Assessing & Accommodating